Pinterest Tip of the Week: How to Show Up in the Gifts Category

If you’re selling items via Etsy or another online store, you can really reap the benefits. Did you know that according to a Shopify study, Pinterest users are more likely to make a purchase based on what they see on this social network – and when they do, they spend, on average, twice as much as buyers from Facebook and Twitter?

Those are some pretty good numbers, right?

One of the ways you can really increase your exposure for items on Pinterest is to get listed in the gifts category. This section of Pinterest is separated by price, making it easier for shoppers to narrow down the selection.

So how do you get your pins to show up in this area of the site? Easy – just include a price.

On Pinterest, when you type the dollar sign ($) or pound symbol (£) followed by a number, a little grey tag will automatically appear in the corner. this price tag becomes part of the image itself when pinned, showing users quickly how much they need to spend to get the item in question.

This also tells Pinterest that your pinned image is an item for sale. So, it will theoretically appear in the gifts section.

Just how Pinterest chooses to display pins is still a bit of a mystery. You used to show up once per hour per category (i.e., if you pinned something on a food & drink categorized board, it would definitely show up on the category’s home page as long as it had been at least an hour since your last food & drink pin).

That rule has since changed, and it doesn’t seem to be based on time anymore, nor is it based purely on popularity. For example, if I go to the art category right now, the very first pin is from five days ago. It has one repin, zero comments, and zero likes. The pinner has 460 followers – nothing to scoff at, but also not mind-blowing. So why does this pin appear to me? I don’t know. No one quite knows.

I do know, that unless they change it again, you only have the chance to include a pin on the “everything” page once every 12 hours. That’s why some of your pins may get a lot of attention inexplicably while others get no repins at all.

But one thing is for certain – if you do not include a price, you definitely will not show up in the gifts category. So if you want to h ave a presence there, start talking turkey. Include a price whenever you can if you want to show that your products are for sale.